Written by

Dan D’Ambrosio

Free Press Staff Writer

With gas prices remaining stubbornly high in northwest Vermont, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., plans to call the top executives of the three largest gasoline distributors in the region this week with a simple request: Stop charging customers in Chittenden, Grand Isle and Franklin counties more for a gallon of gas than customers elsewhere in the state.

Sanders is planning to call Bruce Jolley, president of S.B. Collins, Jolley Associates in St. Albans; Skip Vallee, chief executive officer of R.L. Vallee Inc. of St. Albans; and Charles Cairns, president of Champlain Oil Co. Inc. in South Burlington.

“It’s a pretty simple and direct request,” Sanders told the Burlington Free Press. “They are charging consumers in northwest Vermont approximately 25 cents more per gallon than in other parts of the state.”

A check of www.vermontgasprices.com Tuesday showed the lowest price in the state in Springfield in southeastern Vermont, where regular unleaded gas was $3.44 per gallon. By comparison, gas was $3.79 per gallon in South Burlington, or 35 cents more per gallon. The national average price Tuesday was $3.43 per gallon.

Sanders said there is “no economic reason” for customers in northwestern Vermont to pay more for a gallon of gas, other than a “few cents” at most for transportation costs.

“The only reason they’re doing it is because they can get away with it,” Sanders said of the three distributors. “That is wrong. We’re in a recession. We should not be ripping off consumers.”

S.B. Collins, Champlain Oil and R.L. Vallee own more than half of the gas stations in northwestern Vermont, according to Sanders.

Neither Cairns nor Jolley could be reached for comment Tuesday. Vallee called from the road in Connecticut on Monday, but didn’t respond directly to Sanders’ charge that his company and others were “ripping off” consumers in northwest Vermont.

Instead, Vallee said Sanders was intent on ensuring that Costco gets approval to open a gas station at its store off Lower Mountain View Drive in Colchester. The national chain has been trying since 2007 to get that approval from a state land use hearing panel.

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“His view is that somehow that will bring gas prices down, forgetting that Vermont has some very strict environmental laws,” Vallee said.

Sanders said on Monday he would not get involved in a “quasi-judicial” environmental board case for Costco or anybody else, but that he would be writing the board urging them to make a decision soon.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Sanders said. “I will ask them to proceed as rapidly as possible.”

Five years of trying

Vallee has opposed the Costco proposal based on the effect it would have on traffic in the area, and on stormwater runoff to nearby wetlands. R.L. Vallee owns a Maplefields gas station and convenience store near Costco.

Vallee said he would be happy to meet with Sanders at the Costco site to show him the harmful effects a gas station there would have.

A spokesman for Costco declined to comment for this story, but on July 16, Joe Portera, Costco’s chief operating officer for its Eastern and Canadian divisions, wrote a letter to Sanders, saying Costco has been seeking land use permits and approvals to build a gas station in Colchester since 2007.

“We have obtained several approvals for our proposed gas station in Colchester, but each approval has been appealed by, among others, gas station owners in northern Vermont,” Portera wrote. “We can discern no legitimate reason for these appeals, and believe that they are really an attempt to use the land use process to stifle competition for gas sales.”

Portera said that when Costco opens a gas station, average gasoline prices in the area “generally fall.” He said an analysis by Costco for the past two years showed that “our prices on average would have been approximately $0.19/gallon lower than the average price in the Colchester area for regular gas and $0.25/gallon lower on premium gas.”

Peter Keibel, coordinator for the District 4 Environmental Commission, said the Act 250 hearings concerning the Costco proposal are complete, and the commission will be making its decision on whether to approve the gas station. Keibel said the commission hopes to decide before the end of the year, but there is no deadline for the decision.

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“We’re working on it and hope to get it done soon,” he said.

FTC won't get involved

The planned phone calls to gas company executives is Sanders’ latest effort to deal with gas prices in northwestern Vermont. In July, Sanders called for the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group and the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a formal investigation to “explore the cause of these unusually high prices in Chittenden, Grand Isle and Franklin counties.”

Sanders said Monday that no such investigation is forthcoming.

“What we have since learned is to the best of my knowledge, the FTC and the federal government have never yet gotten involved at the local level in price gouging,” Sanders said. “They have never gone into a situation to determine why prices are higher. That’s unfortunate. We’ll have to see what we can do to create a more vigorous FTC, but that’s not easy.”

The Federal Trade Commission did do a study in July, however, that confirmed prices in northwestern Vermont were 10 to 43 cents higher per gallon than they should be, according to Sanders.

In August, Sanders held a Senate field hearing at Burlington’s City Hall, where he questioned Joseph Choquette III of the Vermont Petroleum Association concerning high gas prices in the Burlington area. Choquette said each location in the state behaves as an individual market, and for whatever reason, the players in the Burlington market, including consumers, have not been as aggressive as in other parts of the state.

Choquette repeated his assertion on Monday, saying competition drives down prices, and “some areas of the state appear to be more competitive than others,” when it comes to gas prices. Choquette said he welcomed the competition from Costco “if they can meet all of Vermont’s requirements.”